October Men

knew every line of that act, in which he had featured prominently in ghastly pale green make-up as Banquo's Ghost. 'I'm not just a pretty face, you know—but please go on.'

'What more do you want?'

Richardson considered the question. 'Well, just when did David say this—during the beef or the apple pie?'

'Is that important?' Freisler's forehead crinkled again. 'But obviously it is. ... Well, I will try to recall. ... It was, I think, before the pie, Mr. Richardson.'

'Very good, Professor. Now—what happened next?'

'Next?' Freisler paused, his face heavy with concentration.

He was beginning to take the game in earnest at last. 'Next it dummy2

was Mr. Howard who spoke.'

'The oilman.'

'He is in the oil business, yes.'

Richardson nodded encouragingly. There was nothing odd about David entertaining oilmen; in his Middle Eastern days he had been as thick as thieves with some of them and he was not a man to jettison good contacts. In fact it was agreed in the Department that half the secret of his success lay in his ability to hold on to them.

'What did he have to say?'

'He disagreed with me. He said—'

'Confined? Don't you believe it, man—you're just plain old-fashioned unpopular. You've been right too many times, and you've said 'I told you so' afterwards. People don't love you for that, David —not in any business.'

'Yes. And then?'

'David just grunted. And Lady Deacon asked him how he had won his reputation for foretelling the future so accurately—a silly question, but he couldn't very well grunt at her—'

'All I do is extrapolate on the past and the present, Helen. It isn't too difficult if you have enough accurate information.

The trouble is we seldom have enough to do the job properly, so most of the time I'm just guessing like everyone else.

dummy2

Nobody sees into the future. I'm not an astrologer.'

'How unromantic!'

'There was a little silence then—what you call an awkward silence, I think. So I took the liberty of pointing out that Adolf Hitler had his astrologer who had not done him very much good. But then Sir Laurie Deacon reminded us that the astrologer Theogenes foretold that young Octavius would succeed Julius Caesar—Octavius went to see him incognito and Theogenes threw himself at his feet—and what had David and I to say to that?'

'And what did you reply to that?'

'I said that Theogenes was no fool and that he would have made it his business to know who Caesar's heir was. And David said—'

'I agree with Theodore—there's always an unromantic reason somewhere. I remember how the news of the blowing up of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem by the Irgun back in

'46 came in to London two hours before it happened. One of the big agencies got a flash, and then an hour later it was cancelled. And then an hour later the place was blown apart.

But it wasn't a case of second sight. It was simply that the agency's man was an undercover agent for the Irgun and he knew what was going to happen. Only his friends postponed the job and they forgot to tell him. And the moral of that is that we very seldom know what's actually going on under our dummy2

noses in the present, never mind the future.'

'Jolly good, Professor. And what happened next?'

'Ach! Next. . . . Is it you are wanting what we ate now, or what we were saying?'

'Both, for choice.'

'So! Well—we ate and we talked . . . after David tells his story of the King David Hotel—yes—comes the housekeeper from the kitchen—'

'Mrs. Clark.'

'Mrs. Clark, that is right. She comes with the pudding in a deep dish and the thick cream, and as David's wife serves it she says to Sir Laurie Deacon, 'This is specially for you, Laurie, although it is David's favourite too.' It is made with apples—' Freisler wrinkled his nose in disgust '—and cloves, which spoil the apples for me ... and then the oilman Howard says—'

'I know a character who's got his own private line into the future.'

David said: 'I take it you mean your boss, Narva.'

'Oh—you can laugh, David. But Eugenio Narva is one hell of a smooth operator. And then some.'

'I never doubted it. He has remarkable flair for doing the right thing—and not doing the wrong one.'

Deacon said: 'You mean, like pulling out of Libya when he dummy2

did? That certainly was nicely judged—remarkable is the right word for it. I wish we had done the same.'